Deborah Coddington: We must have a heart, even if murderers don't

The last execution in New Zealand was in 1957, and until now I've assured myself people of this country are reasonable and would not countenance the reintroduction of the death penalty ... until I read the press release put out by Sensible Sentencing's Garth McVicar last week in the wake of the hostage-taking at Paremoremo Prison.

After police and corrections staff had successfully persuaded murderer George Baker to release his hostage, an 83-year-old sex offender, McVicar put out a press release containing the following statement:

"We need to ask ourselves, if Baker had ended up killing himself or his hostage, would they have been a loss to society ... the answer of course is a resounding NO."

I don't believe I've heard such a heartless sentiment publicly voiced outside the workings of a novel or drama.

I still advocate greater public access to background knowledge about sex offenders in the community, but that does not include turning away while they kill each other or themselves.

Isn't this attitude one hair's breadth from tossing prisoners into cells with razor blades, ropes, and enough sleeping pills to overdose?

Why stop at that? Why not just house all the rival gangs together in prison, stop the arms embargo, seal the borders and let them shoot it out? After all, they're no great loss to society? And think of the taxpayers' dollars they'd save?

This is one drum-beat from capital punishment, and in the current climate I have no doubt that a trickily worded citizens' initiated referendum would result in 87 per cent of half the population seeking the death penalty for selected murders.

In 2005 a highly unscientific poll on TVNZ's Close Up of 9685 viewers showed 7063 voted yes for capital punishment, and 2622 voted no.

Easy to be hyped up in favour of hanging when there's been murder most foul, but who thinks about the effect on professionals not connected to the victims?

Researching a book I plan to write next year, and taking advantage of America's much cheaper (than New Zealand) retail prices for books, last month I stocked up on crime literature.

I was in Chicago, Illinois, a state which still has the death penalty for some murders. At present, thanks to former (disgraced) Governor George Ryan, there is a moratorium on Illinois' use of capital punishment, but that doesn't stop convicted prisoners being sent to death row.

Nor does it halt the various campaigns being run to have it abolished - by leading newspapers, volunteer organisations, and the Illinois State Bar Association, which points out that between 1977 and 2007 while 12 prisoners have been executed, the state has been forced to release 18 innocent men from death row.

Capital punishment doesn't reduce the crime rate, and capital cases are hugely expensive to prosecute, as appeals drag on for years.

It's no wonder these lawyers campaign against the state's use of death as the ultimate punishment, since they, too, are victims.

Public defenders assigned to represent the accused in these cases have a most ghastly task.

They go to work every day and fight for a person's life. Mostly they fail. They have no social life. Rarely do they have family life.

No doubt there are some citizens, like McVicar, who would cut to the chase and do away with publicly funded defence counsel, but shouldn't the prosecution be forced to prove its case? Are the police always right? Without legal representation on both sides, don't we just have anarchy?

Finally, from the Chicago Tribune, another take on the death sentence, a letter from William Pierson, the undertaker who retrieved the remains of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, raped and murdered in 1983, and whose "badly broken, frail, little body" he embalmed.

With words McVicar might take on board, Pierson responded eloquently to those wanting to kill Brian Dugan, Nicarico's murderer:

"I see death almost every day. It's what I do. Dugan does not deserve the peace that death brings. He deserves to live - to endure the pain and misery and ridicule and punishment of sleepless nights for what he did, for the lives he ended and for the lives he forever changed. Death would be far too merciful and an easy way out."